Ready, Steady, Go
by LIVEFASTER
Summary: After the events of Ultimatum, Jason returns to Paris for closure – to find where things went wrong. But he'll find a lot more than closure in the place that started it all.
1. Chapter 1

_**disclaimer: **_I - obviously - don't own anything you recognize.

**_a/n: _**thanks so much for clicking on the link to read my story! I

really hope you like it. c:

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"Don't be sad, _signore_."

Amongst his solitary daydreams, the husky, Italian-accented voice startled him and he looked around before figuring out that it was a canvas set up across the path in the grassy middle of the park that said it. Well, maybe not the canvas itself, but it came from behind it. His thoughts were confirmed when a girl that appeared in her mid-twenties peeked around the edge of a canvas so large it was a wonder that the easel didn't fall over. Her hair was black with a glossy sheen and it fell in loose curls to about her mid-back and she flicked her head as strands kept falling in front of her eyes.

Jason glanced up from his hands quickly to see the girl leaning with her cheek against her canvas and a smudge of blue paint across her collarbone and a similar stripe of green along her cheek. She had appeared out of virtually no where about half an hour after Jason had taken residence up on the bench with the backing unintentionally made out of the stone wall that ran the perimeter of the walkway looking over the Seine and had been painting ever since. "I… what?" Jason asked.

"You're sad," The girl said simply, still analyzing him. "Don't be."

"You don't get it." His tone was the harsh, cold monotone that he'd learned early on as Jason Bourne.

"Of course I don't," She said, not unkindly just calmly and pointedly. "I only will if you want me to."

Jason didn't answer right away. He toyed with the idea of not answering at all. The silence hung between them for a long, but not entirely uncomfortable, moment before the girl took his silence as an answer in itself.

"Well, just look on the bright side." She instructed mysteriously.

Jason took the bait. "And what, pray tell, would that be?"

She gave him an incredulous look that smoothed into a warm smile. "If you hadn't come to Paris, you never would've met me."

Jason ran his tongue along the inside of his mouth before letting out a short and bitter, almost mocking, laugh. "A lot of stuff wouldn't have happened if I hadn't come to Paris."

"And you have to make amendments for this stuff, _sì_?" She asked, coming out from behind the canvas fully and walking across the park to sit next to him on the bench. She gave him plenty of room, in fact, just the right amount, and it made Jason wonder if this was her second job – talking to strangers.

Jason didn't even consider answering that time. He simply ignored the question, knowing that the girl would pick up his side of the conversation as well.

"And you don't think you can. Your type is getting more and more common these days. It must be something in the water. Global warming and all that." She made a vague motion with her hand.

"My type?" Jason asked slowly. He had come to Paris for closure. To find where he had gone wrong and what he should have done instead. He hadn't mentioned his departure to anyone – he was _dead_ for god's sake – and he had barley thought of his doubts within his own head.

She nodded, looking at him with curious eyes. "Your type. The ones that come and sit in the middle of my landscapes and take the once vibrant hues and turn them into dull parodies with their negative auras. The ones who think they can't outrun their pasts."

Jason leaned back on the bench, letting his head fall back against the cool stone and he closed his eyes against the bright sunlight. "And you've taken it upon yourself to make them feel better?"

She shook her head. "You're the only one I've ever talked to." She glanced back down to her hands and began picking at some of the dried paint that caked them. "Most of the time I leave them alone to their thoughts. They seemed unattached to the world. They were unpredictable."

Jason smiled, eyes still closed and his head still back. "And you don't think I'm unpredictable?"

"No, I think you are. I think you're just unpredictable enough to change it. Unpredictable enough to fix yourself."

Jason looked down at his own hands silently, unsure of what to say. "Why?"

"Because I know what it's like," She started in a soft voice. "I went through it and I know what people need to have to start over… What they need to be willing to _give_ in order to get what they want." She stood and began walking towards her canvas. "Why else would I be in Paris?" She chirped over her shoulder, her voice noticeably more light hearted.

"And you got a new life?"

"I didn't get a new life. My past is still very much there. But I got a bright future." She said as she reached up to unscrew the clasp that held her canvas in place, sending him a smirk as she did so.

"You think, no matter what happened in the past, all people can do that?" Jason questioned slowly, halfway between wondering what had happened to the girl and halfway between thinking about his own problems.

"You can do anything you want to," And with that, she spun the canvas around to face him.

The canvas was a panorama view of the harbor with the stone wall and path in the foreground. The colors on the very edges of the painting were bright and beautiful and gorgeous, and as if it had been the girl's words about stolen hues and vibrancy coming to life, as they moved closer and closer to the center of the picture, the colors seemed to dull and it seemed as if the brush strokes had become more hesitant. All until it centered in on a figure sitting on a bench, done in the same vibrant colors that made the outer edges so beautiful.

"It's the beauty of living."


	2. Chapter 2

**Thanks so much for the kind reviews! I hope that everyone likes this chapter as well. **

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Jason had never been the type of person to toss and turn throughout the night. He normally found himself sleeping stilly through the night, never quite fully asleep and always on the alert and ready to grab for the gun that he had under his pillow. But Jason's first night back in Paris, that night it wasn't going to happen.

Waking up, Jason found himself lying on the ground. His breathing was shallow and his hearing was muffled, but he could still tell that he was in a loud area. He pushed himself to his feet and brushed the remaining sand off, flinching just the smallest bit as the noises that the sand had been muffling hit him from every direction. Cars honked and tires screeched on streets that weren't far enough away from the beach that he had ended up on. Children screamed as they chased and were, in turn, chased by the surf and people talking everywhere. He looked down and found himself in a pair of tan shorts and a teal shirt that he hadn't seen in almost a year.

It didn't take long for everything to sink in. That was the day that Marie had died. He could remember it clearly. It was the _only_ thing he remembered clearly.

Jason walked a couple of feet and turned to look in the direction that he knew Kirill would be. He turned immediately and took off through the streets, slamming into the small car just like he had all those months ago. He drove quickly through the streets, quicker than he remembered doing, thinking only of getting to Marie and being _faster this time_. It wasn't long before he found her and she was climbing into the car, bikini top almost blindingly pink and her constantly changing hair a bright blonde. She was beautiful and Jason took a minute to remind himself of it as she situated herself in the passengers seat.

Nightmares where soon to take hold of him as he tossed and turned over and over, the horrible memories from his past quickly forming in his head and not leaving out so much as the type of drink a tourist bought as Jason weaved through the streets.

If anyone where to walk into Jason's room at that minute, they would have been able to tell that he was falling into a dream full of nothing more then nightmares. Under his eyelids, his eyes moved rapidly and the noises that where coming from his mouth where little more than quiet whimpers.

It wasn't long until he found himself instructing Marie to drive, sliding onto the opposite chair against his will and ignoring the screaming in his head that it was a bad choice. The bridge was approaching fast and all Jason was worried about was dealing with his gun and babbling on about where they were to meet while Marie tried to point out different choices for him to make that might end the entire ordeal.

And then she was jerking forward, her entire body hitting the dashboard hard and sending the car careening. Jason jumped for the wheel, steering away from one edge and into another. Through another and into the waiting river. Jason counted the seconds it took the car to hit the murky waters, and he immediately began trying to get Marie out of the car. If he could just get her out faster this time… This time she might survive.

Before he knew it, Jason found himself underwater. His heart was beating faster and faster with every moment and the car was sinking just as quickly. Everything seemed so clear and so familiar. He got out of the car faster this time, swimming to the other side of the car and pulling her out quicker, breathing into her with more desperation than he had the first time.

But something was wrong this time. He wasn't able to pull Marie from the car, and sure, the first time he had had problems but this time it was like the bullet that had hit her had bolted her to the seat. He improvised and breathed into her with desperation from her place in the car, pulling back and watching her head fall forward onto her chest. He lifted it again, willing her to be alive, but the body under his hands had shifted again and this time, he was holding… Nicky.

The other girl that he had failed to protect.

--

With a jolt, Jason found himself waking up in his bed, cold sweat almost pouring off his body. He took a deep breath and glanced down at his hands that he was surprised to find shaking. It was the first time in what seemed like years that he'd had a dream at all, much less one of Marie. His breathing was erratic and he reached for the cell phone sitting on his bedside table, sliding it open with one hand and using the other to run through his short, somewhat damp hair. It was only three in the morning and there was, after a dream like that, no chance of him getting back to sleep anytime soon. Still, he closed his eyes and let himself fall back onto the bed, trying to control his breathing as he did so.

It hardly lasted though, and a second later he was shoving the sheets back and moving onto the floor, ignoring the chills that the cool tile sent up his body. It seemed that the further and further he distanced himself from Jason's life and everything that had happened, the faster those things seemed to chase him. It was funny, really. For the last couple years, Jason had wanted nothing more than a past. He wanted memories and he wanted to know exactly who it was that he had been before the experiments and amnesia. And then he had gotten one. He had made one and suddenly, he couldn't want to erase it more. It had been full of loss and new starts and confusion and then everything falling again and then the cycle would start again.

Jason reached for his bags, open yet packed that were sitting on the dresser and he began searching through them with the dim lights from the passing cars and street lights that spilled in from the windows along one wall. He eventually pulled out a simple pair of jeans and a black t-shirt and a sweatshirt, pulling them on and stuffing his feet into the shoes tossed near the door as he walked pass them and out the door, down the hallway, down more stairs and out into the cold Parisian night. It wasn't long before he found himself staring into the waters of the Seine that, despite the bright lights from somewhere and everywhere behind him, still managed to be a surprising shade of black, considering how almost clear they had been earlier in the day whenever he had glanced out over it in between his turn to speak in the cryptic conversation that had left him feeling more confused than ever before.

The girl had seemed to have confidence in him that he'd get over his past. It was sort of funny, when you thought about it - the only person that had any confidence in him whatsoever was someone that didn't know anything about him. The conversation had ended with her showing him her painting as the bells in a church chimed and her head had dropped to her watch and then she'd been gone, running off through the streets of Paris with the canvas and easel clutched against her clumsily and yelling back over her shoulder, "_Buona fortuna! La buona fortuna, signore!_" He had stayed for a couple more minutes, wondering what exactly had just happened, before standing and returning to his hotel where he had checked in under yet another fake name and received a raised eyebrow when he had chosen to pay in cash. He didn't see the girl for a week after that.

Jason walked close to the buildings by instinct, allowing the shadows to fall across his face and stuffing his hands deep into his pockets. While managing to look unassuming, Jason was still entirely too quick to react to even the smallest sound to make him look like one of the tourists wandering back to their hotel after losing track of time in a 'local' bar. His hurried footsteps carried him to the place he had both wanted to and been willing himself not to go to a lot faster than he had ever planned, and once he was there, leaning up against the side of the building and wondering _why_. Though he might have had a plan once, maybe right after he'd gotten a burst of confidence from who he had dubbed as 'artist girl', he had thought that he could have just walked back into his apartment, past the superintendent who no doubt had seen his picture on the news and into his apartment without any problems. There were other ways, of course. He wasn't desperate enough for an excuse to pretend that there weren't. Those options would simply consist of him having to draw upon his old talents. And if he were found after having used one of them, it would only be that much worse.

Jason was just straightening back up, getting ready to leave and go back to his hotel, when he realized with a bit of confusion that his name was still on the listing. He was reported as _dead_. The superintendent had been an obviously intelligent woman who had remembered him as soon as she had seen him. There was no way she would have missed the reports that he had been reported as dead. A thousand different scenarios immediately wrenched themselves through Jason's head, the most prominent being the idea that his apartment was still under surveillance. The idea shouldn't have shocked Jason as much as it did. It made sense when it was thought about – his body hadn't been found and while sometimes it didn't mean much, for Jason Bourne it meant a lot. And even if they were convinced that he was dead, it didn't mean that there weren't unanswered questions about who exactly he was and how he had managed to win the game of keep away for so long.

Jason peeled away from the wall, thankful for the hood on his sweatshirt that he had pulled up somewhere between his hotel and his apartment. But the added protection against alerting the police if they had had cameras up on the outside of the building didn't do anything for the thoughts circling inside his head. He had almost been wishing that the apartment would be rented out to someone else. Everything would have been cleared away and it would have been like he had never existed. Instead, it was very possible that the room was now a base for a group of Parisian cops, all looking for something that could give them anything to add to the constantly swirling updates on the Blackbriar project and everything that he had been able to reveal.

Jason ducked into the first open place he saw – a corner bar that looked clean from the outside, but one that he wouldn't be able to find ever again. And despite it's outward impression, the insides of the bar were anything but standard. Things in the bar were concealed behind a thick curtain of smoke and a loud French song with a pulsing beat made the glasses sitting on the tables around him jump with each bass beat. There were two pool tables in an alcove towards the back and the bar in the front was positioned in front of a full wall of shelves and multicolored bottles, the lights set in the wall behind them creating colorful patterns on the opposite wall. Jason walked towards the bar and took a seat in the bar stool furthest to the left.

There was a dull clunking as the pool players broke and then an outbreak of loud French, followed by a soothing Italian phrase that had Jason grabbing the glass of water he'd ordered with a flash of his hand and he walked towards the back quickly to find the girl leaning over the pool table, que poised carefully in her hands and when she finally moved it forward with a quick flick of her wrist, two striped balls fell into their respective pockets and a pair of grumbling men distributed another couple of Euros to the pile situated on the polished wood boarder of the table. She straightened back up and turned to look at him, appearing not at all surprised to see him there and asked, "You been looking for me, tiger?"

Jason's voice was quiet; over aware of the other men in the room looking at him suspiciously when he says, "I need your help."


	3. Chapter 3

"You need my help," she repeated the words hours later as she sat down at the table across from him, clenching her hands together on the tabletop.

Jason looked up from his plate, still filled with something that he wasn't entirely sure about and only turned to sandpaper in his mouth when he did try it. It was well after breakfast, not quite lunch yet, and the only people in the place besides them were the two waitresses over in the corner, whispering over their opened cell phones, and a cook in the back, swearing under his breath.

"You found me at three in the morning," she added, voice questioning as if she were trying to jog his memory.

"Do you want something?" He asked instead, secretly unsure of how to go about getting her help and knowing that she wouldn't think he was just wondering why she was there. He had been the one to instigate the meeting, after all.

She shook her head. "I'm fasting."

"You're fasting." Jason repeated, making it not quite a question but still knowing he'd get an answer in return.

"van Gogh cut off his ear for his art," She said with a shrug and a grin as if it explained everything. "Would you rather I do that?" She didn't wait for an answer. "I'm trying to get hallucinations. It's a little cliché, a little _vecchio_, but if it works…" She shrugged again.

"I thought you painted landscapes?"

"And _that's_ working for me." Her words were affirmative sarcasm, but when she talked again there was no trace of it. "Now, _signore_, if you don't mind me asking, do you always enlist strangers for help or am I just special?" She picked up a spoon that had been set at the table and began to twirl it through her fingers.

He laughed shortly and humorlessly and hesitated before answering. "I don't really have anyone else." Even as he said it, he realized how self-pitying it sounded, and it really, honestly bothered him.

"_Molto bene_, then you wouldn't mind leaving," She said. "Because you're doing that thing again. You know, when you make everything around you want to wilt and turn black and white and die." She finished, sounding entirely too serious to be smiling the way she was, a smile that was able to draw a smaller one out of Jason. "But that's not true – you know me.

"I don't actually _know _you."

"Sure you do. My name is Sabine and I am twenty-six years old. I am, if you haven't noticed yet, an artist. And, as if that's not bad enough, and by bad I mean stereotypical, I am a poor starving artist." She explained quickly, her accent throwing Jason at some parts.

"I now know more about you than I know about myself." Jason said in a quiet, low voice.

Silence fell between the two of them for a long moment, then. Sabine continued weaving the spoon between her fingers and looked at Jason without staring while he tried to avoid her gaze and then she flicked her hair back quickly. "What's your name?"

Jason didn't answer right away. Jason, David. Webb, Bourne. None of them sounded right and he didn't know which one he really was. He'd been told that his name was David Webb, but he wasn't David. He would never be David again, even if he began going by the name. If anything, he'd just feel like an imposter. "Jason." He finally said stiffly.

"A nice solid answer, always appreciated." She said slowly, nodding. "But it's nice to meet you, anyway." She offered her hand over the table and Jason took it, counting it as the first nonviolent human contact he'd had since Nicky. There was a lengthy pause before she was off and talking again. "So Jason. What can I help you with?"

"I'm in Paris." _Again_, his mind added. "And I don't know anyone," _Again_. "And I don't know what I'm supposed to do." _Again._

"I can see how that could be bothersome," she said, not unkindly, before retreating back into the welcoming silence. It seemed like she had something to say but she was waiting for Jason to say something first. The only problem with the situation was that Jason had no idea what she wanted him to say.

--

It was the third morning in a row that Jason had eaten at the café alone only to be joined by Sabine as soon as he had finished eating, - or not eating, if that was the case on that particular day - that he learned something more about her, other than what she had already told him. She was halfway through a cup of coffee and stared down into the cup as if the dark liquid held all of the answers in the world. Jason sat across from her, his own coffee long since forgotten and turned cold and bitter.

She looked up and looked across the room at the waitresses that Jason knew more about than he wanted to after being one of two customers in the café at the same time for the past three days, such as the fact that the one on the left was having boyfriend problems and that the one on the right was the reason for the problems. Sabine watched them pretend to be best friends as she told Jason, "I haven't been home in ten years," She punctuated the statement with a violent swirl of the cup in her hands, sending some of its contents spilling over the side and over her hand.

"I don't know where home is." Jason fired back, as if it were some sort of contest between them. The fact that it wasn't was something that Jason had learned during one of their first conversations. There was no quid pro quo between them, no give and no take. Sabine had asked him early on if he had ever been in Paris before and for how long, which he had answered, but she hadn't been bothered to share her own information, deciding instead to retreat back into silence.

"What do you think is worse? Not having a home to miss or having a home and never being able to go back?" Sabine questioned thoughtfully, sounding not at all biased by her situation or his, as if she were trying to overcompensate to make him feel comfortable around her.

Jason surveyed her for a long minute before speaking. She was curled up in her chair much like a cat and to anyone walking along the street she seemed to be perfectly content. He couldn't imagine under what circumstances she couldn't go back to what he assumed was Italy. And when he asked her about it, he didn't expect her to answer. He expected for her to ignore him or snap at him that it was none of his business, but it never once crossed his mind that she would be candid enough to answer.

"I disowned my home country. I've become what you may call an expatriot."

"And you want me to be honest about this?" Jason asked, having created an opinion in close to thirty seconds. Sabine just smiled in response, looking at him for what was maybe the second time in the three hours they'd been sitting there that day. "I don't think you _get_ to even think that yours is the worst since it was a conscious decision on your part."

"Ah, so you have amnesia." Was the only thing she said in response and Jason was taken aback at the knowledge. It must have shown on his face, too, because she smiled at him and her tone was soothing but not condescending when she elaborated, "You just said both conscious and on my part, which was verging on redundant, so I figured one of the words must mean something to you. I just happened to choose conscious and run with it."

Jason laughed in disbelief, after a brief pause, running a hand along his chin as he did so. "I can do a lot, but if I even attempted to do that I'd fail miserably."

"I don't know about that." She offered, but she didn't sound like she was being humble at all. It was more a declaration about him rather than pertaining back to herself in any way.

Jason set his elbows on the table and then set his chin in his elbows. The girl had never given him any reason to trust her. She'd never fought to make him believe her, not that he was paranoid enough – yet – to think that everyone was always lying to him, much less an Italian painter who seemed to have been just as messed up at one point as he had been. And yet, he couldn't help but think that if anyone could help him, it would be her. He made a choice in the seconds that followed. "Do you want to go for a walk?" He asked suddenly, smirking behind his hand when she jumped a little bit after having been lost in her own thoughts.

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**a/n: **Alright, so I know it's a little slow and boring right now but I guess in my desire not to rush it, I'm just making it overly boring and slow instead, sorry! Fortunately, I already have the next part all planned out, and it's loads more exciting, so I'll have that up in a day or two. Thanks for trudging through a couple slow chapters in the meantime!


	4. Chapter 4

Jason placed one hand on Sabine's back and shoved her towards the door, looking around to be sure no one saw the two of them in case the entire thing went downhill after this. "Hit the button that says Bourne."

Sabine had her hand almost to the button before her head tilted to one side in the way that, and the fact that he knew what it meant already worried Jason, meant she didn't quite know what was going on. "Bourne. That sounds familiar."

"Yeah, I think I've heard it too. Just hit the button." Jason said quickly from his spot off to the side of the building so that someone opening the door wouldn't be able to see him. In the back of his mind he knew that he was using her and knew that he was taking an unnecessary risk by involving her, but at the end of the day it seemed like it would be the way that would raise the least amount of problems.

"If you don't know the person then why – " She was cut off by Jason grabbing her hand slamming it against the button, careful to keep from touching it by himself as he did so. "And why are you hiding?"

Jason was saved from having to answer her by the door opening. But instead of the hearing the voice of the female superintendent that had been there, the door opened almost immediately and there was an unfamiliar male's voice. "_Bonjour, mademoiselle_."

Sabine's eyes widened in surprise and she actually jumped forward a couple of inches when she finally rushed to start talking. "_Bonjour, signore! _Ah_, monsieur!_"

"_Comment puis-je t'aider?_" Despite the politeness of the man's words, his tone sounded rough and official.

Sabine grinned a little sheepishly and shifted her weight from foot to foot. "_Je ne parle pas français."_

"_Parlo poco Italiano_."

"English, then?" Sabine asked with a big grin that didn't quite reach her eyes in the way Jason knew it could.

"Very well. I am Lieutenant Oliver Mallery. Direction Centrale Police Judiciaire." Jason felt his knees buckle and his stomach drop in the same instant. "How may I be of help to you?"

"DCPJ?" Sabine let out a chocked laugh. "He had a few motor violations, sure, and I apologize if I am being an ignorant Italian, especially since I may be biased considering what gets through on the streets in _Roma_, but bringing in the Judicial Police seems a bit… extreme." The DCPJ was the rough equivalent of the American FBI.

When Mallery spoke again, it sounded like he was almost mocking her. "Miss –"

"Pisano," Sabine offered.

"Right. Miss Pisano, if you don't mind my asking, who exactly are you looking for?"

"Zacharie Bourne, _signore_," She dropped her head down to look at her feet. There was an old saying that when people push for more information, a bad liar would immediately back off and spill the truth, but a good liar would simply press harder and dive deeper into their cover story. That in mind, Jason automatically assumed that she had lost it. But then he saw the way she was smiling and digging the toe of one of her trainers into the sidewalk. She was playing harder.

"Ah, a boyfriend?" Mallery had read her body language the same way Jason had, but it didn't mean that he believed it. At Sabine's nod, he continued. "Well, you're not going to find him here."

Sabine's mouth opened just the smallest bit as realization that she didn't actually feel formed in her eyes and she stamped her foot once. "He is _always _doing things like this. Always thinking that just because I can't get into MENSA, I'm a flake when it comes to everything!"

"This would have been an incredibly cruel joke had it happened sooner, Miss Pisano." Mallery chided and Jason stiffened again, especially when Sabine shot him a look under pretense of flipping her hair.

"With all due respect, _signore,_ it's a pretty cruel joke right now."

Mallery let out a gruff, if not forced, laugh. "Of course… But please allow me to help you find him. If he owns a residence in Paris, we should have him on record."

"Oh, no thank you." That might have been a bit too quick. "He obviously did this to prove a point that really doesn't need proved anymore, so if I could find him myself it would give me bragging rights for almost a year."

"Are you sure?" The Lieutenant asked. "Paris is a big city and you'd best not be wandering around it at all hours of the night."

"I'm sure I'll be alright. Plus, if I did get your help, I still couldn't lie to him."

The two conversed a few minutes longer, but Jason stopped paying attention, choosing instead to watch a bird across the way as he considered everything that had happened. He had assumed that the police had set up some sort of watch in his apartment. His body hadn't been found, obviously, and that meant that he was as good as still alive.

The door clicked shut and the charming smile slid off Sabine's face almost instantly. When she turned towards him he was already a third of the way down the street and ignored her when she called his name a couple seconds later. It might have been better to just tell her to be quiet, that they'd talk about it when they got far enough away, but he was fairly sure that that would just start an even bigger fight between the two of them and he simply continued walking.

"Jason," She said again, having jogged to catch up to him. He continued to ignore her, doing nothing except shove his hands deeper into his pockets.

"Jason!" All patience was lost from her voice and she grabbed the arm of his jacket, using him to haul him around to face her with more strength than Jason had given her credit for. "Jason, _who the hell_'s apartment did you just drag me to?" She half yelled at him, startling several birds from their nests in arched roofs and scaring them from their perches on the nearby steps.

"You don't want to know." Jason said in the tone of voice that generally meant the other person should drop it. He tried to turn around and continue walking but was roughly turned back around by the hand fisted in the lapel of his jacket that he hadn't been able to dislodge.

"I just lied to one of the most powerful men in Paris and I don't even know why. You don't_ get _to keep secrets from me." Her voice was thick with tears but there was a spark in her eyes that told him that they weren't because she was sad or hurt, just angry and frustrated. It was the most emotion Jason had ever seen the girl display, and it threw him for a minute before he was able to think straight.

Jason stared at her for another minute before he snarled, "Fine. You really want to know?" She narrowed her eyes at him and lifted her hands slightly and he rolled his eyes before grabbing her arms and dragging her into the nearest alleyway, turning her into the wall and pinning her against it with his hands on her shoulders.

"Jason Bourne. It was Jason Bourne's goddamn apartment. Jason Bourne, who evaded many of the most elite forces on the planet, exposed some of the most guarded documents to ever be constructed and killed more people than he could possibly _remember,_ lived there." He unintentionally tightened his grip on Sabine's shoulders. "And you want to know the best part?" He paused just long enough to allow Sabine to open her mouth before speaking again. "It's me. I'm Jason Bourne. So I guess you can add 'is still alive after a ten story drop' to the list." He pressed Sabine even harder into the wall for the briefest of seconds, dropped his hands away from her like he had been burnt and turned around in one fluid motion, raising a hand to run across his eyes as he tilted his head to the sky.

He stayed like that for an undetermined amount of time. It could have been hours or simply seconds, all he knew was that what snapped him out of it was the sound of sirens, crisp and blaring, through the previously undisturbed Parisian air. The sirens were sudden and almost unexpected when they finally came. Jason had thought that by that time they'd been the clear. They were quite a few streets away from his old apartment building and if Mallery had called the police as soon as he'd gone inside, they would have been there already, so he had to have had gone inside and thought about the conversation before either simply letting it go or calling after a couple of more moments. Maybe it wasn't even for him and he was just being paranoid because he had known that Sabine hadn't been telling the truth.

Sabine started beside him and Jason grabbed her wrist and started running, half dragging her behind him. Despite their current state of disagreement, he wasn't about to let her be taken into custody only to be released and escorted out with double the forces currently in Paris, all of which would walk her to her doorstep and then turn and immediately go looking for him. The safest thing to do would be to get her out of the streets and then go back to the hotel room and do the same. Jason hadn't actually seen the sirens when he picked up his pace, sensing Sabine do the same next to him. They were still several streets over and only audible, but police cars moved fast, especially through the alleyways of Paris.

They sprinted down the alleyway, Jason taking notes of where the fire escapes were located and which ones were down the furthest for future use the entire time. The alley ending and emptied them onto a road where the sirens were louder but more people were milling around and thusly more protection. They darted through the crowd, Sabine muttering apologies to everyone they ran into and pushed pass, allowing him to blindly pull her through the crowd. She ran head first into his shoulder when Jason stopped dead in his tracks at the first sign of the flashing police cars coming around the turn at the far end of the street, and he, in a faux dance move, spun Sabine around and pushed her forward with a hand between her shoulder blades.

Sabine moved back through the crowd, shying away from contact and squeezing between people with more consideration than Jason had ever shown, so when she suddenly veered off course and shoved between a couple posing for a picture, Jason knew something had startled her. It took him just a half second longer to note the policeman swaggering through the crowd in their direction and he followed Sabine through the crowd on the sidewalk, veering into the street and dodging through the lanes of traffic idling at a stoplight.

They had been clumsy, though, and had attracted attention. Attention that Sabine's bright red jacket wasn't helping to lose at all. The first shot sounded and a bullet whizzed past Jason's head and hit the car they were behind's side view mirror. Jason risked a glance behind them and saw another policeman moving towards them and he shoved Sabine forward and she skirted the car so she was between the front of it and the bumper of the car in front of it.

The crowd around them was panicking despite – or because of – the police yelling for them to stay calm and get down and just relax. Because it was so easy to do that while bullets were flying from just about every direction. "They're not very organized!" Sabine muttered into his ear, squealing and ducking when a bullet shattered the rear window of the car directly in front of them.

"They never are," he paused for just a minute, moving to grip one of the straps on the wrist of Sabine's jacket. He waited an instant longer, long enough for a bullet to hit a lamppost and then pulled her to her feet. "There's going to be a street to your left coming up here, go down that street and I'll run into you." He registered the fact that for what might have been the first time that day she didn't fall right before he pulled her to him clumsily, curling in around her head. That's when she did trip over her own feet and he used her off center of balance to wrench her over to his other side. He let go of her arm before she could protest, the two separated by a line of long since abandoned cars.

Jason sprinted between the lines of stalled cars, glancing over at where Sabine was running every once in a while and seeing her make a sharp turn towards the street Jason had instructed her to turn down earlier. If everything went well for the next block or so, Jason would make a right turn and then the roads they were both on would be largely symmetrical, leading them straight to the same area. More than that, that 'same area' would be where they had started. Despite the running they had done, the streets where they had done all of it in were situated in a large square. But obviously, the karma gods didn't find any exceptions even when the person they were punishing couldn't remember the crimes he had committed to be punished, because he was just starting to veer to his right when a police car appeared and slid to a stop in front of the street.

The cars that Sabine and he had escaped from further down the street weren't getting anywhere quickly with all of the forgotten traffic, but the officers could be on their way at anytime. The officers' shouting filled the air and Jason quickly stepped into one of the small gardens lined in front of the line of buildings to his right. He ducked behind a solid staircase that led to the building's front door and used the protection to buy himself time to look around himself for anything he could use against the officers. There was an ornate black fence that wasn't especially tall but the posts had pointed tips on the end and it would probably work like a knife. He wrenched two of them out of the ground and waited until he could hear the grinding of one of the officer's shoes and then he turned out from his hiding spot and before the officer could react, he shoved one of the fence posts into the gun. The other one, he plunged into the man's shoulder and shoved him to the ground, taking the gun and wrenching the post out of the muzzle.

The other officer that had been a couple steps back at the time yelled and began firing from his own gun and Jason used a single, well-planned shot to hit that officer in the shoulder as well. He didn't react the same way, however, and though it obviously hindered him, it wasn't enough to take him out of the game. Jason stepped onto the fallen officer's chest and wrenched the post out of his shoulder with the same hand that held the post he'd pulled from the gun, all the while keeping his eyes on officer that was currently preoccupied with his wound. If Jason could, then he'd rather run than stay and fight. But he, too, was suddenly distracted by voices behind him. He turned and saw several officers approaching from the opposite direction and he fired blindly at them, backing up the entire time. He bided his time until he had verged on running into the other policeman, stopped when Jason heard him say the word ' LieutenantMallery_' _into the radio attached to his shoulder and he abandoned the shooting to turn and dig one of the posts into the guy's stomach and then took off running again.

He and Sabine found each other sooner than Jason had thought they would, though Sabine had had more time to run than he had. They collided roughly, Jason just managing to catch Sabine by her elbow before she went sprawling onto the ground and haul her back to her feet without breaking his stride. She wasn't as lucky and continued stumbling behind him, managing to retrieve her footing just as Jason was looping an arm through the bottom rung of a fire escape and extending a hand down to her. She gripped his wrist and he gripped hers, found it slick with blood and noted an injury further up on her arm, and with a sharp tug she was sent sprawling on the first landing of the escape with an undignified huff. He followed her, granted with more coordination, and pulled her to her feet with a hand on her arm as he passed by her and started sprinting up the steps. About halfway up, he shouldered a window roughly, sending the glass shattering and stepped through it. He didn't miss the surprised and almost dreading look on Sabine's face, even as she carefully followed him.

"Just passing through," Sabine mumbled behind him as she followed him through the apartment, shoving past the shocked, scared and confused tenant, out the main door and sprinted down the hallway to another door, the handle of which Jason broke and they ran into that one as well. It proved Jason's memory correct when they found the fire escape outside one of the windows and when they climbed out of it and hurried down it, they were on in an alley on the right side of the building.

The sirens were bleedingly loud and as Sabine continued moving towards the main street, Jason grabbed her arm and they both went sprawling to the ground behind a large cardboard box. The sirens stopped abruptly, but in the relative silence that remained, Jason could hear the hum of motors. Straight across the alley, there was a flash of white projected on the wall every once in a while and Jason continued listening for footsteps and Sabine shifted, seemingly moving back towards the wall more and her hand found a beer bottle that spun under her weight and rolled across the alley quickly, shattering on the wall across it. _Naturally. _

Sabine flinched away from him while Jason extracted the gun in one swift movement and aimed it towards the gaping alley opening and a split second later, whether it was the glass shattering or something else, a policemen passed in front of his range. He fired, obviously, and hit the officer in the shoulder, sending him sprawling to the ground. There was more shouting and the sound of footsteps was loud then and Jason rolled forward onto his heels and peered over the box, resting the muzzle of the gun on the box and firing quick shots. Some connected and some didn't, but he didn't have the time to figure it all out. Bullets were flying back at him then, but he stayed as low and out of the way as possible. Sabine had curled in upon herself, whether it had something to do with the fact that she had alerted the officers to their placements or if it was just the first thing she'd thought of. He reached out and shook her foot and she lifted her head out of her arms and he motioned her into a sitting position.

Jason closed one eye, abandoned aiming at the officers and instead aimed past them. The shot he fired then was his final one and he grit his teeth at the dry clicking that followed. If it hadn't connected, and with the sounds of gunfire from just in front of them, they'd be in a horrible situation. Of course, Jason didn't think about the possibilities that he'd missed – he was highly trained. He was _the best_.- and without pausing to survey the damage he grabbed Sabine's sleeve and for the countless time that day, pulled her behind him as he started running. Bullets licked at their hips and Sabine yelped several times, but Jason's choice location had been straight across the road and they slammed through the door, resting their backs up against the wall of the hallway that the door opened into. Sabine watched bullet holes appear in the wood while he fumbled with the gun; replacing the used clip with the extra one he had grabbed from the body of the officer he'd gotten the gun from. There was a window to the left of the door and he reached across Sabine's body to punch the glass out with the side of his fist. It shattered and he spun around, firing at the officers.

A second later, he stopped and so did everything else.

Sabine glanced at him and at his nod she let out a relieved sigh and opened her mouth to say something but he silenced her by pulling the door back open and then he was out and running again, no longer pulling her and just letting her run behind him as they put a rather large amount of distance between the scene, the rapidly approaching sound of another round of sirens and themselves as they could before Jason slowed to a stop.

"Alright," Sabine panted as she drew to a stop next to Jason. "When was the last time you ran just for the sake of running?"

"I don't know." He answered absently. Jason wasn't really paying attention, choosing instead to peer though the windows of the nearest car. It seemed common looking enough, low to the ground and fast. He quickly removed his jacket and tore off one of the arms, wrapping it around his hand and secretly glad that it wasn't one of his better ones, wherever the long billowing black one that he had liked so much had ended up.

"Me neither. Let's not do that again." She said, taking several more deep breaths and shaking her hands, which somehow managed to calm her down.

"I'll try to keep that in mind," He promised, right before he plunged his elbow through the car window, the shattering of the glass giving way to a loud car alarm that he immediately set to work dismantling. He managed to shut it off in a little under three minutes and only shocked himself twice. He sat in the driver's seat, one foot resting over the accelerator and the other remaining on the uneven sidewalk and began fishing through his jacket pockets.

"Where do we go from here?" Sabine questioned, eyeing the car with something that looked like a cross between curiosity and amusement. She was, for her credit, taking everything exceptionally well. Jason figured that that was what happened when so much of it was thrown at someone at once. They just kept focusing on the next thing rather than dwelling on the last revelation. It was a practice that he had probably used but had never had time to actually appreciate the way that it kept people from drowning in everything going on around them.

Jason looked up from the stack of assorted credit cards, currency and passports that he had found, taking inventory of the ones he had on him. "We don't do anything. I go back to my hotel room and you go home, wherever that might be. If the police ask, tell them the truth. You didn't know who I was and you lied because you didn't know what else to do. Meanwhile, I'll be on my way out of Paris and we'll never see each other again, which is for the best. But, if by some twist of fate we do cross paths again, you don't know me and I don't know you. We don't communicate and we both stay off the radar for the rest of our lives."

Sabine seemed speechless for a minute but recovered quickly, took the time to take deep breaths and return back to the Sabine that he 'knew'. "I'm not sure that I'm okay with that plan." She decided finally, meeting Jason's eyes determinedly. "I still have more than a couple of questions for you."

"I could say the same, but I recognize the fact that you have little incentive to share. I wish you'd do the same." He shut the door, both figuratively and literally, not that it helped at all because of the jagged window gaped openly, allowing Sabine to set her elbows on the small sill, the remaining glass digging into her red jacket and creating small, thin rips in the material as she leaned down to meet Jason's gaze again.

"The Lora. Apartment 428." Sabine said unflinchingly, tilting her head in a silent challenge.

Jason turned to stare straight ahead, his mind running a million miles an hour. He knew the area and he knew that it was really skeevy territory, home of drug dealers and prostitutes. _No way_ there would be officers there. He tugged on the stick shift and Sabine stepped away from the car and into the middle of the street, watching him as he began driving in the direction of her apartment.

* * *

**a/n: **Remember when I said I'd update more frequently? Right... Sorry about that! Oh, and for this chapter... it started off okay, didn't it? Haha, the action stuff probably isn't possible/probable, but hey. c: Thanks for hanging in there!


	5. Chapter 5

Jason found the disheveled, stone grey apartment building settled between two identical buildings, the car he had stolen shuddering on its unmarked detour of unsteady roads and sharp turns. There was graffiti wrapping around one of the corners and fading into the darkness of the alley next to it and there was a wrought iron window casting laying on the sidewalk and the window that was missing it was broken.

But it still wasn't the worst place Jason had been. The bridge, that _goddamn_ bridge in Goa, that fateful rooftop in New York, that river, for god's sake… they all took priority above the outwardly ugly apartment building. Jason parked the car a little ways away and jumped the three steps leading to the door. He gripped the handle and found it loose and cringed before entering.

Inside, the air was heavy and constricting with smoke that tasted almost acidic. It took Jason's eyes a minute to adjust to the dim lighting and there wasn't much to look at once they had. The lobby was scarcely decorated with an unattended desk situated in the middle of a large doorway that immediately led to a staircase that disappeared out of view.

Jason took the stairs two at a time, the first staircase opening up to another that circled up to the top floor. Somewhere between the first and third floor, he set his hand on the railing and came away with a shard of glass set in his palm. Somewhere in the maze of rooms and stairs people were yelling and there was a hollow thud that made the window set in the wall rattle and created tiny fractures at the corners.

When Jason reached Sabine's apartment, it was, unsurprisingly, easy to break into. And surprisingly cold. Sheer, gossamer drapes hung from the thrown open window and blew in the early evening breeze. The walls, once white, were covered with paint – some just large spots of paint that look like she had simply thrown it at the wall and other places where she had spray painted it. A vase was sticking out of a hole in the wall, the hole probably a separate incident that she had covered up by putting a vase in it that she had, in turn, filled with water and set several brushes in.

There was a phone laying in two pieces on the floor, and one of the drawers from a desk across the room was pulled out and the paper from inside was strewn out and laying across the floor. Right next to the door, there was a table with a pile of mail laying on it. The letters were opened sloppily; the envelopes ripped almost completely in half, but something about them were more interesting than that. He picked one up and read the name – _Sabine Gallo_. He slid it to the back and read the next one – _Sabine Charisteas_. Jason tilted his head and flipped to the last envelope and read the name on it – _Sabine Aguirre_.

He tapped the envelopes on his hand, thinking, and the sound of the paper fluttering almost overshadowed the creak of the tiled floor from behind him. _Almost_. Jason had just enough time to decide that Sabine wasn't the type of girl to have a cat before he grabbed the lamp that had been sitting on the table as he pivoted to face the person, causing another hole in the wall in the process. They were holding a gun, and Jason brought the lamp up to hit the gun. He wrenched both his and the other man's hands upwards and forced him to shoot into the ceiling.

Jason straightened and locked his arms, securing the gun upwards for at least a minute. He focused on his attacker and found him all tan features and close cropped hair, deadly intent in his eyes. "Who sent you?" He growled, jerking his hands forward and forcing the man to take a couple steps backwards to keep his balance. He just sneered and Jason shoved him again, getting ever closer to the open window. "Who?"

Jason hadn't expected that the man would simply allow himself to be pushed out a window, hadn't expected him to fall for that sort of trick. So when the man stepped back and freed his gun from where it was caught up in the lamp, Jason was a step ahead of him and reached just a little to his left and caught his fingers around the rim of the vase in the wall, pulling it out and wrenching it around to slam against the attacker's head. It shattered, leaving a bloody gash along the guy's head. He seemed dazed, and Jason grabbed for his collar. The small couch that was more storage for empty paint cans than it was furniture was somewhat near them, and when Jason forced him against it, it tipped over easily and they went sprawling to the ground. There was a piece of glass shining somewhere to his left and Jason reached for it.

And then was suddenly facing the piece of glass in the other guy's hand. It shone in front of his eyes and he wrenched away from it, slamming his head against the floor hard and he saw black for a fleeting instant. Jason tried to move one of his hands but found it pinned under all of the other guy's weight. The glass was cold on his throat when the attacker pressed it flat against it, and Jason tried to shift his neck away from the pressure. He began to turn the piece of glass vertically into Jason's neck, and Jason turned his head to the side and raised it as quickly and roughly as he could.

The glass was painful and then Jason's hearing was ringing after colliding with the attacker's head and then both pains were gone and he was back on his feet. Jason grabbed a can of paint and was thankful that it came with an opener taped to the side of the can. He quickly grabbed the opener and started forcing the top open. Before he could, however, he heard the click of a gun and turned around. The man was bloodied and bruised, but he had the advantage right then and Jason physically readied himself for a shot but mentally readied himself, focusing on the man's finger on the trigger rather than the man himself. As soon as he saw his hand tense, Jason stepped out of the line and swung the paint around so it was where he had been standing when the bullet collided with it.

Blue paint splattered all over the ground and Jason grabbed for the man's collar again while he still tried to figure out what had happened. Jason forced the man onto the ground, kicking the gun out of his hand and out of reach after the attacker had unintentionally fired into the wall a couple of times. Jason put one of his arms across the man's neck and pressed down. When the man opened his mouth to gasp for breath, Jason poured as much of the paint down his throat as he could. It wouldn't affect him immediately, but even if Jason let him go, it wouldn't take long for the toxins in the paint to work and him to end up dying. When the paint ran out, Jason slammed the empty can in the same place he had cut him with the vase and it was the final blow needed to knock him out.

Breathing hard, Jason quickly searched the man. He had seen enough fake documents to know that most of this guy's - Gabriel Sidorov of Moscow, his passport claimed – were fake. Jason's breathing hitched, mind automatically going to things like Treadstone and Blackbriar. Things that he couldn't give any chance whatsoever of his name getting back to. He slid the documents into his pocket and walked over, picked up the gun and fired a last shot at Gabriel.

--

When Sabine finally appeared, she walked in and turned back around to the door immediately. She wiggled the doorknob several times and locked and unlocked it and Jason simply watched her as she tried to figure out how her door had gotten unlocked as apposed to wondering if the person that had broken the lock was still in her apartment. She tugged her jacket off and set it on the small table near the door and turned around slowly, trainers crunching over broken ceramic and glass and god knows what else. She looked around as she walked, finally stopping in the middle of the 'entryway' and looking to where Jason was sitting at the small kitchen table, watching her and said, "Oh my god, what happened?"

Jason leapt to his feet, his chair flipping over in his haste and wrapped a hand around her throat to press her against the wall.

"You lying bitch," he hissed, teeth bared and face hot. "You told someone I was coming back here."

Sabine let out a startled gasp and her hands immediately found purchase on his chest, the heels of her hands digging in as if to push him away and when she spoke she was already breathless and Jason could feel her pulse fluttering under his finger tips, despite her eyes remaining open and unafraid as they scanned over his face. "No I didn't. _Non lo sapevo_… I didn't do anything."

"Shut up," he growled and pressed a little harder, feeling how her form bent beneath him. He could never kill her, not like that, not after everything. But he could hurt her enough to dull what pain he still had left.

"I asked you to come here so I could ask you ques-"

"You're lying."

"_Davvero_?Am I?" she asked, calm in a body she assumed was already too gone to bother worrying about the lack of oxygen. "Remember how I had hurt my arm?"

He released her abruptly and she slid down the wall while taking several deep breaths. Jason turned away from her crumpled form and looked out the window where the world seemed an endless black. Even the lights of Paris seemed to have died that night.

"I have to get out of here." He said, mostly to himself.

But he heard the quiet sound that was Sabine clearing her throat and was able to move his lips with her words when she answered him anyway. "I'm coming with you." By that point, he had given the speech too many times and simply turned to look at her. She was still sitting on the floor, knees pulled up against her chest and arms looped around them. "I lied to and ran from the Judicial Police. Aided and abided Jason Bourne. I can never do anything in this city again. At least let me come with you as far as the border."

He considered her for a long minute before turning back the window, still not answering her right away. Nicky and Marie had both said almost the exact same thing, or at least something that ended up meaning the same. He remembered the tone of Marie's voice, the look in Nicky's eyes… And so he had agreed to help them, of taking them with him.

They had both been unnecessary risks, and neither one of them had been vital all the way through. Marie had insisted upon coming with him, but he could have stopped her, could have left during the night. She had, after all, had enough money after he had paid her. Of course, Jason never would have just left her alone somewhere. The second someone had seen them together, she had become a target. She had become the bigger target of the two of them, in most cases, because those after him had immediately figured that he would have done anything to keep her safe. Words from months ago, Ward Abbott's words about it being his fault and he subconsciously tightened his hands into fists.

Nicky had been more complicated. She had wanted what Sabine was asking for. An escort away from where they were. A guide to successfully avoiding authorities in the way he had become fluent in.

"'You're _infrangibile_'. '_Unbreakable_', that's what people say," Sabine informed him in a voice filled with resolute sureness as she stood back up and began walking across the room. "And if you're not, then I'll have to help, won't I?"

* * *

**a/n:** So if you're reading this, I love you. Really, I do. It took forever for me to get this up, and I'm very sorry about that. Another thing I'm sorry about? The fact that most of this is taken up by my super long fight scene. I promise I'm working on putting some actually progress in this story. Thanks again, everyone!


	6. Chapter 6

There was no turning back. Not for Jason and not for Sabine.

They were standing on the crowded train terminal, Jason leaning against a sign that had a map of all of the possible train routes from Paris to London, where Sabine and Jason were looking to go. Sabine, however, was nowhere to be found. He had last seen her examining the graffiti on the inside of the station, following the bright and almost spastic designs down the wall.

Jason clenched his teeth. His mood had been worsening steadily since he had glanced at his watch and learned that it was approaching ten at night and their departure was still looming and not already gone. Instead, he focused on the milling crowd around him, which consisted of the sort of group that you could find in any well-known foreign city. Well dressed business people, groups of tourists all talking in different languages and sometimes following a tour guide like lost puppies and locals, sitting and smoking or reading and looking at the tourists with disdain and irritation at being interrupted to be asked a question that they probably didn't know the answer to.

But despite the enormous crowd, the train station, with security cameras positioned at every possible angle, probably wasn't the best of places for them to be at for an extended period of time. Police officers regularly walked up and down the terminals, weaving through the crowd and they were able to congregate at any spot at any time if they had any inkling that something was wrong. Jason would have liked to have arrived at the station with just enough time to make their train, as was the way an assassin was trained. But Sabine had assured him that if they tried to _just _make it, they would miss it marginally. So they had ended up leaving much earlier and arrived with about fifteen minutes before the train was to arrive. It was too much time. Too much could go wrong.

He thought back to Waterloo and blinked himself back to full awareness. He straightened away from the sign and took a couple of steps in the direction that he had last seen Sabine wandering off in. It wasn't hard to find her. She was standing just outside the small shop near the entrance to the station and was using a pen that, judging by the expression on the face of the employee who couldn't have been more than eighteen, she had asked to borrow and had yet to return to scribble something on her hand. Jason approached her and was able to see that she was drawing designs on her arms, spanning from the tips of her fingers to her elbow and he slid the pen from her hand while he tilted his head towards hers so he could be heard over the hustle and bustle of the station. He told her, "I'm going to go make a phone call. We leave in just a couple more minutes, so stay here and we'll meet up in a minute."

She had a slightly dazed look in her eyes but nodded and picked the pen back up just as the poor employee had been getting ready to try and discreetly slide it across the counter and slip it back into the cup and quickly went back to scribbling cryptic designs up her arm.

* * *

The phones were located down a side hallway, separated from the main terminal by a wall of thick stone to provide some sort of blockade towards the loud noises of the rest of the station. All five of the phones were open, but he took the one the furthest down and picked up the receiver as he punched in the number that he had used not too long ago to find out the final pieces of the puzzle that was his life – that is, his name and birthday, although the birthday had really just been a code.

It had been a smart move on Pamela's part.

There was the automated clicking of a transatlantic switchboard and then Pamela apparently accepted the charges. "Pamela Landy," she answered and Jason exhaled quietly.

"I'm surprised you haven't changed your number yet," Jason mused as his greeting.

"Bourne?" Jason could almost see the surprised look on the woman's face, the wide eyes and severely arched eyebrows raised.

"You have to be up to your neck in the press around this thing."

There was a pause and Jason glanced at watch as he listened to the sound of papers and a drawer slam. "Where are you?"

"I want to set up a meeting." Blunt, straight to the point, less of a request and more of an informative statement. It had always worked for Jason, especially when it came to Pam. "About my file." He added as an afterthought.

There was a pause and Jason glanced at watch as he listened to the sound of papers and a drawer slam. "We've had this discussion before, Bour-"

"It was circumstantial," Jason interrupted. "You still had your CIA agents looking for me and I didn't feel like making it just that much easier for them." He didn't have time for this, not now.

"What makes you think that this is the most 'circumstantial' time for me?" asked Pamela. "We are in the midst of some of the biggest trials that we've ever have to deal with and I'm not about to drop everything I have to do to get prepared to meet with supposedly-dead Jason Bourne."

"They trained me. It'll be no shock to them that I'm alive." He said, his voice drenched in sarcasm.

Another squeak and Jason could see her shifting around, agitated. "Your file is in government custody." She stopped talking, but Jason knew that she wasn't at all finished and stayed silent. "You were the best. If they need evidence against Hirsch and Vosen, they'll find it in you."

Jason didn't answer. He looked down at his watch and saw that they had been talking for three minutes and thirty two seconds, three minutes of which had been spent in silences. His tone was sharp when he said, "You'll find a way."

Pamela didn't miss a beat. "When?"

The intercom crackled to life and Jason hurried to speak before anything was said, less give Pamela and whoever she had working with or for her a clue to where he was.

"How long do you think it'll take me to get to New York?" He hung up and turned away from the phone.

Jason was surprised to see, when he turned around, Sabine standing a little ways up the wall. She was leaning casually against the wall and was turned away from the rows of phones, but it didn't change his slight confusion. When he set his hand on her shoulder she turned around, not shocked or surprised, just turned. "You moved," he commented as he continued to walk past her.

She didn't answer immediately, hoisting her bag, the tiny duffle that she had thrown together in a good two minutes at Jason's instruction, higher onto her shoulder and followed him quickly towards the idling Eurostar. Jason hadn't brought anything, deciding that the few things he had picked up since coming to Paris wasn't worth the risk of going back to his hotel. Sabine had to do a quick side step to avoid running into a frazzled looking tourist who was too engrossed in their map to watch where they were going and ended up stuck as another group of people passed in front of her, all heading for the same train they were looking to get onto.

Large crowds on a Eurostar were a mixed blessing. Eurostars in general, were mixed blessings. They didn't have the privacy of a regular train because they didn't have any sort of cabins. Crowds would be both good and bad, the noise Jason assumed a crowd would make would drown out any whispered conversation he and Sabine might have. But if it didn't and one of them said the wrong thing that was overheard by the wrong person, it could turn into a very bad situation in a very short amount of time. But they were the fastest way out of Paris. More a means to an end than anything else, and the two and half hour trip would be worth it if it left Jason enough time to get a plane ticket for a fairly early flight the next day and, further still, giving him enough time to think beyond going to New York.

Honestly, he didn't know if Pamela could get his file back from whoever was looking through it to clues about what Treadstone and Blackbriar were. What they still are and what they could become if they didn't take those in charge – Kramer and Vosen and Hirsch – and get rid of the source right then and there all together. He didn't know what would happen if his reappearance was publicized or if he'd be forced to speak to someone about what had gone on in the Operations.

The silence between them on the train was heavy and awkward. Sabine had her forehead resting against the window, one hand propping her chin up as she watched the French scenery flash by. Jason shifted uncomfortably and tried to read, for the umpteenth time, all of the papers that he had saved up, collected and written on since Marie had suggested it. It was pointless. He knew every word of every line, could recite the articles in his sleep and rewrite the pages upon pages of his dreams and flashes of memories at the first mention of them.

Jason stared at the pages without reading them, mind moving faster than the train. He gripped the closet thing he had to a past, the closest thing he had to a life. And being able to _hold_ something that should mean so much to its owner scared him. It made him feel open and vulnerable. Remembering wasn't the same thing as knowing, as having lived an experience or having known a person. It scared him now, used to anger him, and he had no doubt that in the future it would lead to a sense of numbness.

* * *

The feeling of someone being close to him, too close to him, startled Jason and he jerked awake. He sat up fast enough to almost hit his head on Sabine's, but she rolled back on her knees and blinked at him with her dark black eyes. She had moved from sitting across from him to the seat beside him and was peering at him with confused interest. "Didn't I ask you not to let me fall asleep?"

"You were only half asleep," she assured him in her soothing tone. "And whatever you have to stay awake for, you'll be able to do a lot better well rested." He noticed that she was holding the papers he'd previously been looking at cautiously, holding them only with her thumb and forefinger and Jason reached to take them from her.

"I've gotten more sleep in the last couple days then in the last couple of months." He began rearranging the papers for no reason other than he had Sabine's full attention and wasn't sure what to do with it.

"I saw my father accept a payoff when I was eight," She told him after five minutes of silence with no prompting for any sort of conversation from his side. Jason didn't respond. "He threatened to kill me if I told anyone." She finished another three minutes or so later

Jason blinked in surprise at her and, before he could stop himself, asked, "What for?"

She answered automatically, the fastest reply he had gotten from her since they had met, "You have your off limits topics and I have mine."

"Then why are you telling me?" He retorted automatically. Jason regretted the words as soon as he said them. Though Sabine was sitting on her knees and turned in the seat so she was fully turned towards him in what could be interpreted as an open stance, Jason noted the defiant tip of her chin and the sure gaze with which she met his. It wasn't how he expected an almost-victim to look; it certainly wasn't how any of the victims he could remember had ever looked at him.

"I wasn't lying about having some questions for you," She reminded him, voice low and whispery, like she was scared of waking someone. "And if I remember correctly, you 'have little reason to share'," She paraphrased. "And now you do." _And now he did._

No he didn't. And so he stayed silent, estimating the time average time that it took Sabine to respond to him. Waiting long enough for Sabine to seem to deflate slightly, shift her weight awkwardly and the tip of her chin fell. Then he told her, not because she was looking at him in that hopeful, 'don't-let-me-be-wrong' way, or because she was right, because she wasn't, or because she was one of the only ones who had ever asked.

He told her because he was interested to see what her reaction would be. Not so much what she'd do, because he had a pretty good idea that she'd simply stare over her shoulder and maybe her eyes would lose focus. Then she'd say something horribly ambiguous that would still calm him down because it was Sabine and she had shown herself to be built on misunderstanding.

He told her his story that amounted to something like a paragraph in a book of tragedies. He didn't offer any back-story, anything deeper than surface level. It was all without explanation, just simple facts that framed his being.

Sabine didn't say anything, just sat and stared over Jason's shoulder and out the window thoughtfully, biting on her thumbnail without looking like she knew she was doing it. Jason eventually turned back towards the window and looked out it long enough to think that Sabine had fallen asleep. "I'll call you David, if you want," She offered awkwardly.

Jason turned and surveyed her. Most of the patrons around them were sleeping and her pupils were blown in the dim light. "I'm not David Webb," He replied simply. It wasn't self-pitying, nor bitter, but instead as if it were as obvious as the Earth revolves around the sun and there were twenty-four hours in a day and that was that. And for him, it was.

Sabine tilted her head slowly, eyes unfocused. "I don't know about that –" Jason opened his mouth to cut her off but she continued smoothly, "- I think you are. I think you're him more than you know. More than anything in the world." Her eyes snapped back to him, suddenly and startlingly focused. It was a little overwhelming for Jason, all of a sudden, having Sabine's entire attention. She looked at him like he held the answers to a life that she'd been living for hundreds of years and still hadn't gotten it right yet. "You're just taking your time figuring it all out."

It was the last thing either of them said for a long time.

* * *

**a/n: **Sorry, sorry, sorry for the long wait! I know, I said that last time blahblahblah, but I was having some mental blocks about this chapter. But I actually ended up really liking how it turned out, so I think it was worth it. Thanks so much for reading, seriously!


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